The Cool Kids
The Bake Sale
(Chocolate Industries)
Announcing themselves as "the new black version of Beastie Boys," The Cool Kids beat critics to the comparison game. Their debut offers a satisfying revamping of old school tropes, rearranging squishy beats, electro-percussion, vinyl scratching, and delays into fresh sonic combinations. The duo deploys minimalism to max effect, evoking Rakim and Run-DMC without sounding like mere imitations. The Cool Kids further set themselves apart by rapping about their suburban upbringing, busting rhymes about mall shopping, Sega playing, and bad grammar. "How gangsta is that?" they ask. "Not at all." Their confident flow, clever lyrics, and so-old-it's-new production already has them outfoxing their idols.
—Jeff Jackson
Shwayze
Shwayze
(Geffen)
Okay, yeah, big points for the name. Lest you be confused though, Shwayze is actually a So-Cal slacker-stoner hip-hop duo. They're all about getting baked and having sex, smoking weed and spilling seed. Imagine a quadrant with Kid Rock, Sugar Ray, Sublime and Beck in each corner—Shwayze falls in the middle, with droopy jams perked up enough to crank at the club, but ganja smoke sufficient to tranquilize a hippo. It's a battle between testosterone and THC; may the best chemical compound win.
—John Adamian
Various Artists
Desert Blues 3
(Network)
This isn't blues as a stylistic descriptor, as it's used in North America, but rather a set of issues with which the performers grapple—political corruption, cultural identity, poverty, revolution and (of course) heartbreak. Ali Farka Tour and Boubacar Traores were greatly influenced by American blues singers, but many of the performers on this glorious collection drew more inspiration from U.S. grunge and European jazz. All is filtered through regional tradition and the ensuing collage sounds at once vaguely familiar yet unique. Better known performers such as Tour, Toumani Diabat, Habib Koit, and Tiniariwen share space with rising stars scattered from Algeria and Mali to Ethiopia and Mauritania.
—Rob Weir
Stereolab
Chemical Chords
(Matador)
When Stereolab emerged in the age of grunge the band's sleek sound was a throwback to vintage Parisian pop and retro-futuristic bachelor-pad music. Now, almost 20 years after they formed, the layers of nostalgia are thicker than ever. Always more about texture and rhythm than songs, the mix of synthy burbles, perky tambourine, sturdy bass lines, the recent addition of horns and the ever-sexy sleepy French-tinged singing of Laetitia Sadier still has its appeal, but Stereolab now sounds old, in a not-cool way.
—John Adamian
